When you're in a great brainstorm meeting and the creative juices are flowing, it's easy to get carried away. Before you know it, you're pitching ideas about cats in tuxedos and wondering if there's any room in your video budget for a Michael Bay-style explosion. And while that all sounds great in the room, those ideas may not get you the results you really want. Effective branded content is created strategically with the intent to serve your brand's goals. Next time a light bulb goes off, ask yourself these 5 questions to find out if your branded content idea is really that good.

Good content is great to have, but it doesn’t mean much if no one sees it. You’re putting in all the work; you want all the shares, media pickup, and unique visitors you can get.

If you’re running a blog, are you sure it’s optimized for distribution? Even in this modern Web-publishing era, too many blogs are woefully behind the times: broken social counters, no CTAS, the list goes on. To make sure you’re publishing the right way, check out these tips to optimize your blog for content distribution...

Which domains have the most engaged audiences in five verticals: women, politics, business/finance, science, and technology?

To determine the top publishers, we used BuzzSumo to retrieve the sharing metrics on more than 30,000 relevant articles between May 2014 and April 2015 relating to the five verticals mentioned above. In total, these articles earned more than 58 million social shares. We used BuzzSumo to retrieve the top 1,000 articles in each vertical that were published between May 4, 2015 and April 30, 2015 as well.

With this data, we identified the 10 publishers in each vertical with the highest number of total shares -- and learned a lot about content promotion along the way. In this post, we’ll walk you through six key takeaways from our findings that'll help you maximize outreach during your next promotions cycle...

Content is a very important part of a company’s social media presence, and as a pivotal part of your marketing mix, it’s crucial to understand whether sharing content or creating content is right for business and activities...

While you may have learned the symbol for pound as a child, that sign (#) today is called a hashtag. And in the world of Social Media, it turns any word or phrase into a searchable link. It is used so that users on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google Plus can track and join discussions on topics based on hashtagged key words or phrases.

Quality cameras take photos with thousands of pixels wide and high, yet when you need to use these images on the online media communities, the resolution needs to be significantly reduced.While this infographic guide helps you to get the right sizes, the actual QUALITY of the photo usually depends on the quality of the LENS you use.So I do not mind trashing thousands of pixes when the final image actually looks just so much better!

Is your website ready for 2015? Here are 5 of the new trends to look out for in the coming year. From Mobile Focus, Interactive, Flat, Simple, and Single Page Designs – stay ahead of the curve and get on trend for the New Year. Our easy to follow visual guide will show you the way.

Social media has trended towards visual content. In the past two years, Facebook launched Timelines, Pinterest became the third most popular social network, and Google+ relaunched with a visual-centric interface. Visual content allows you to craft a distinct brand identity, garner new interest, and connect on an emotional level with customers and fans. In short, a picture is worth way more than a thousand words.

This certainly makes a lot of sense and while most of us like using visual elements, if you like me, we have been a bit slow it making use of this valuable component. Instagram is one area that has shown itself to be a viable marketing tool. Its pleasing to use because there is so much material around in the form of motivational quotes etc and you can put your own creative touches to images to help with your own branding.

The power of blogs in influencing consumer purchase decisions is stronger than you might realize. According to data from a research study conducted by Research Now, nearly nine in 10 consumers (84%) make purchases after reading about a product or service on a blog.

Think your password will protect you? Think again. New research shows that passwords are not a viable security practice. We created this infographic with Ping Identity to examine the false security of passwords.

Visual content is exploding on social media, with sites like Pinterest and Vine leading the charge.

Even Twitter, which started as a place to post short and simple messages, now has images for a more visual experience. Indeed, the future of digital media is upon us — and it’s rich with visual content.

According to an infographic from Oracle, there are five tweets per second that include a Vine link. The acquisitions of Tumblr and Vizify point to an increased interest in interactive media and infographics, with Yahoo investing in visual media.

The infographic by Neil Patel from Quick Sprout will give you a simple formula for enticing headlines. Though there's no one-size-fits-all headline trope that guarantees a crazy influx of traffic, the tactics below should help you tweak your headlines to get your posts the attention they deserve.

Have you ever wondered how Facebook is moderated? And with the global nature of Facebook, who are these moderators? The following infographic by Who Is Hosting This reveals the details about Facebook traffic, showing how Facebook moderators play a huge role in making sure that our newsfeeds are safe from offensive content. Other details include a look at the 800 to 1,000 Facebook moderators worldwide, the types of content that are subject to moderation, as well as the reporting process that the flagged content goes through before any decision is made about it.

With over 1.35 million users on Facebook have you ever wondered how they have their eyes and ears on the massive content that is posted each day? Like any other company they #team members around the world monitoring offensive content...read on!

Social media is often used for personal expression; to show special interests, proud moments, something informative, and personal statements. Social media accounts can be an extension of who were are. We live in a time where we can reach more people than in person. It can be tempting to tell everyone everything...

Social media is something that almost everyone uses and can give significant impact to people. Some people cannot differentiate what is and what is not appropriate to upload or publish hence it is good that everyone knows what and when to upload. Some people now days leave negative comments because of inappropriate posts which may lead to conflicts between people or hurting one's emotion. I feel that people should be sensitive when uploading a post so that negative impacts of social media will not worsen.

Almost everyone has social media accounts nowadays. But it stills narrow down to whether you are using it appropriately or not. Especially when the social medias are linked together, you would have to be careful on how you use it, as once the photos or status are online, everybody in the world would be able to see it.

Social Network Demographics: Key TakeawaysEmbedded in these six pie charts is some very valuable information. If you’re not a data-person, we’ve got a few observations of our own for you to chew over. Find key takeaways from this chart at the article link.

You only have few seconds to capture their attention before your message gets drowned in the sea of updates. Now, if you know how to capture attention in social networks, you are one step next to the successful marketing campaign. Find out 25 tweaks that you can implement right away, which are often overlooked, to capture attention in the social networks.

Relevant social media-isms, including image size guidelines, helpful tips & stats - that can help you navigate through the most popular social channels easily.

There’s no doubt modern businesses need to be social. But it’s really hard to be successful and keep track image sizes, character limits, pixel requirements, engagement windows, and hashtag optimization, to name a few. It turns out there are methods behind all the madness, so we’ve compiled relevant social media-isms – including image size guidelines and helpful tips & stats – that can help you navigate through the most popular social channels easily...

What people are sharing and how they’re sharing it is changing fast. A new infographic from Go-Gulf, a web design team based in Dubai, has gathered the latest data, which is now available in this newly released (July 2014) social media infographic. Here are the highlights…

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.